Chassis modifications

this video we're going to modify the shell that goes around our our bitsy bot so that the switches will be able to fit through and we'll be able to get the bumper switches in place so we're we're sort of not exactly sure how much material we need to remove so we're just going to take away a chunk and see if we can make that work now when I was doing this I learned that the the nipper pliers that I use to cut the plastic is actually not the right tool because it tends to cause the plastic to split and can make it crack in places that you don't want it to crack so I would just use the knife and sort of take it up take it away just a little bit at a time and and that way you can get like exactly the way you want it now again anytime you're using a knife you should have a lot of experience with it and be wearing safety glasses and things like that especially using a break-off blade knife because they can the sections can't pop away if you if you cut it the right wrong angle so but you can see how easily the styrene carves it's very easy material to work with and so just taking apart taking more and more of the styrene out at a time and making sure that we have enough clearance for our switches and we'll go back and take a little bit more styrene out we're trying to find a way to do it in a way that's also aesthetically somewhat pleasing so we're going to instead of having just a harsh jog or cutting a curve into the styrene and in order to get enough clearance for our green wires we really have to remove a whole lot more material so we're just marking that out with our with our break off blade knife and then snipping some of it off with our with our nipper pliers and that's where I discovered that the nipper pliers can cause it to sort of split and so it's not nearly as as good as the break off blade knife it's faster but you you risk cracking it so in any case we've got our sort of shell or outer housing and we're making sure that the switch is clear and that the wires clear and trimming off the excess material and we've put it up upside down and we can see that there are it's totally clear and everything's good we've managed to smooth off the edges and now we're just lining it up for for the final time and we're gonna go ahead and put the screws that hold the outer shell in place and that will that will finish the modifications to the outer shell all right and we're tightening down the screws there last adjustments on the 22 gauge wires making sure everything works and tightening the switches down and we've already loaded some code on the Arduino and so we're gonna push our bumper switches and see if we can get them to trigger the lights there they go so the lights are working pretty well and our bumper switches cover the almost the full front and back of the bot so we can be sure that when we run into a wall we'll be able to respond to it